“Great Grand Mother”
3/4/93 (revised 12/99)

You said you hoped you would die
Before I was born.
You did.

Alive you were angry, probably senile—
Pronouncing dark curses on yourself and others.
It’s a magic women in my family are born to.

After they buried you,
You didn’t leave
But rode in an old crank car with my mother,
Your granddaughter.
You spoke to her – dream talk.
I don’t know what you said;
I was unborn, and waiting for a soul of my own.

Now I am a woman, and I feel you watching,
Helping, honing that power in my depths—
Fathoms of female strength:
Grandmother
Mother
Myself.

Making wishes, curses, seeing ghosts.
Your curse in life became a blessing in death:
I feel you more alive inside me,
Every moment, great grandmother,
I am you.

 “Fish Swim”
1993 (?) (Revised 12/99)

 “Sonnet #1”
2/8/93

Behind solitude exists a hidden place
Of desp’rate dreams—a world of innocent
Achaeans tired of war, their passion spent
For beauty’s sake while Ares sleeps in Thrace.
Emotion lost in deserts aged with guilt
And blood are never understood but buried
In trampled dust, then by Charon ferried
Through Stygian hate while Lethe its mem’ry wilt.
The walls assailed are built in fear to keep
The builder locked inside: Alone in thought,
Achilles, sulking, leaves the cause he fought,
And learns even gods can’t heal wounds too deep.
But you, my friend, step forth and grasp my hand,
Together we’ll dream Aeneas’s promised land.

 “Lizard”
1993 (?) (Revised 12/99)

Envy green
Jungle’s shining gem
Veins of gold flecked scales
Defining a nose
Outlining eyes
Like a molded idol
Worshipped dream creature
Appearing fleetingly
Dissolving in nature’s
Leafy embrace.

 “Vertigo”
1/28/99 (Revised 12/99)

I am in an orbit,
My tilted pivot swiveling—
A spin I cannot control,
A center I cannot comprehend:
Celerity blurs my flat vision—
Two dimensions blend
Into the third, the sphere
I have never been before.
I am speaking to you,
My words the wisps of rushing wind,
Whispering in your ear.
You take my fate
Between finger and thumb,
Your gentle breath so close
I speed to an end:
Spin
Then slowly,
My axis skewed,
Lean
Tip
Fall
All vertigo.

 “Judas”
(A Sestina)
2/22/99 (Revised several times, latest 12/99)

My story tells of my final trouble,
Inspired only by these cold silver coins—
They cascade through my wretched fingers
Falling around this gnarled oak tree,
Rolling off the cliff’s sudden edge
Showing a pale face to the watching moon:

Last night His face shone in the hazy moon
Light, a talisman of my heart’s trouble,
A curse dragging me to sanity’s edge.
It was evil betrayal only for coins
That led me to the temple by the tree
Where a friendship escaped through my fingers.

Out in the sinful cold, my fingers
Numb as I walked, blind, despite the moon
Revealing my fate at the temple by the tree.
I entered the yawning door without trouble—
Thinking only of bartered silver coins—
Not of my friend, bloody tears, sanity’s edge.

“The prophet prays at the garden’s edge,”
I told the anxious dark man.  His fingers
Twisting as his servant counted coins
And sin under the silver hunter’s moon—
My shameful token for my trouble.
I did not know they’d hang him on a Tree.

My friend, kneeling beneath an ancient tree,
Watched us approach the garden’s edge—
And my betrayal became a heavy trouble
To my heart as my trembling fingers
Touched his face.  Reflecting the moon,
His eyes were more precious than those silver coins.

But I was lost for these infernal coins—
I betrayed my friend to the cruel Tree
By my shallow kiss under the pale moon.
I watched them lead him away, the edge
Of a sword at his throat, my fingers
Grasping only blood for all my soul’s trouble.

I’ll count my trouble with hell’s coins
I hang from the fingers of my own tree—
Edge of heaven barred by a kiss under the moon.

 “The Dating Scene”
(Formerly “Cold-Blooded”)
4/21/92 (Revised 12/99)

Vague leaves print gray,
Silent Walls;
Obscure picture windows—
Dark bars and dim glass
Reflect the Trapper’s Moon,
Ambiguous eyes, golden
Like a reptile’s.
Flecks of black,
Slits focus, watch and search
My face.

I look down, avoid the eyes.

Intelligent lizards have
Temperatures that mold
To your weather;
But I can not fathom this.
My storm creates heat
I can not escape.
Burned, my face flushes—
The heat exudes from my collar,
And the lizard moves closer
With its secret solid shadows.

 “An Elvish Wish”
1993 (?) (Revised 12/99)

Oh see the slight
And slender shape
Reclined in the shadows
Of the Father Oak?

Isn’t she the flawless
Child of earth?
She is that maiden of lore—
The one we have
Banished from our minds…

The dancer on the wind
The one who whispers the
Shadows into being.
She is all that we have lost.
Innocence, perfection, and freedom
Gone like a million wishes
In the breath of the earth.

In the middle of my dream
I see her.
She recites an elvish rune
I remember the words
They are the thieves in my dreams
Stealing reality
And leaving only wishes of tears
I cannot have.

I plead to step through
The portal of my dream
And run the ancient path
One with the earth
One with her—
My elvish wish.

 “Choice”
(Formerly “Hallway”)
1993 (?) (Revised 12/99)

This hallway lies between—
A dimension between two places.
But it is not space—
That is another dimension.
One place is heaven
(But not your heaven?)
One place is hell
(But not your hell?)

You scrape your nails
On the walls of your mind
To escape the choice,
But your blood cannot
Make you decide.
Yet you must choose.
Indecision is a trap—
The real death.

Two places –
A dimension apart,
A hallway connecting
Life and Death?
Each place knows not
Of the hallway—
And you in the hallway
Know not of yourself,
But only of two places
A dimension apart.